Even while that thought raced through his mind, Mazurin watched the tiny green globule in utter fascination. If Blodgett reached for that globule, thinking it a grape, then for the first time in this whole misbegotten affair Mazurin would have reached a point of decision. And to save himself he couldn’t tell whether he wanted that or not. He knew what he wanted to do, well enough, but he felt the first premonitory stirrings of a guilt that he knew would plague him for years after the act. What right had he to interfere with the lives of millions of still unborn?
Mazurin, he told himself, you’re an ancestor! He glanced at Eve’s pale, drawn face. I’ll see to it that you are, he added.
Blodgett’s open palm came down on the desk, sideswiping the fruit bowl. The bowl wobbled elliptically around the desktop, spilling grapes. But the nearest to Blodgett’s hand was still the globe that was not a grape.
“How say you, sir?” demanded Blodgett. “Destiny or death?”
His hand hovered, as ready for one gesture as another. He glared at Mazurin.
Mazurin took a deep breath, “I choose destiny, Your Honor.”
Blodgett’s features relaxed. His hand dropped gently on the table, the pudgy fingers curling. Gently they closed on the green sphere. Smiling benignly, Blodgett popped it into his mouth.
He stayed that way, without changing posture or expression, for three long seconds. Then his eyes bulged. A shout formed itself on his lips, but no sound came out. He—withered somehow, shrank indescribably in his uniform. There was a look of horror and of passionate appeal in his eyes. And then, suddenly, Blodgett was not there any longer.
To the others, it looked as if he had simply vanished out of the world of men. But Mazurin, shuddering, knew that his fate had not been that simple—or that pleasant.
Eve gasped, “What was it? That grape he ate—”
Mazurin felt sick. “A mangel.”
Charlie demanded, “What’s a mangel? What did it do to him?”
Mazurin said shakily, “You could torture me in the subtlest or crudest ways and I would not tell you. This primitive civilization is not ready to know anything at all about mangels. Nothing!”
He put his head in his hands. One part of him knew that Blodgett was a stinker; the other part was simply saying, You let him eat a mangel. You killed him. The most sacred ancestor of all, the Father of the World.
He heard the other two talking in low, tense voices. Eve said, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Blodgett had already started making himself up to look like his propaganda pictures.”
“Yes. We could put it over, Charlie. They’d have no choice. It’s either agreement or total collapse.”
“Gone,” Mazurin moaned. “Blodgett. The beautiful society he built with his giant intellect—”
“No,” said Charlie. “None of it’s lost. Except the worst part of your civilization.”
“And certainly not the most sacred ancestor,” Eve added. “Not the Father of the World.”
Mazurin, lost in misery, looked up, “But the mangel got him. Blodgett is gone.” He touched his forelock absently.
“You’re here,” said Eve. “You know what the future is supposed to be like. You’ll build Blodgett’s world—with a few important changes.”
“Oh,” Mazurin said, suddenly realizing. “You’ll put one of your men in Blodgett’s place and I’ll advise him on what I remember.”
Charlie leaned over his chair. “One of our men-—one of everybody’s.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” asked Eve, squeezing Mazurin’s arm. “The Father of the World, the most sacred ancestor, will be a descendant.”
“He doesn’t get it,” Charlie said.
“You,” Eve stated, “will be Blodgett.”
Mazurin started to touch his forelock. “Me?” he asked dazedly, then finished the reverent gesture.
He was an ancestor, after all.